Entertainment

Digg: The Rise and Fall of an Internet Darling

Digg was once the epicenter of Internet cool and culture. It was a content king maker: get your story on Digg's homepage and watch the traffic roll in. Then came the precipitous fall from grace and, finally, a less-than-exciting-sale to Betaworks (for a reported $500,000) last week. The news left many in the web community stunned. How had did a company that had risen so quickly and gained a massive, grassroots group of fans fall so far?

Digg was founded in 2004, and handily rose to become one of the most popular social news aggregators. Yet the decisions made in the site's design over the years drove users away in droves in 2009 and 2010.

In the timeline below, we examine how Digg rose to success, and missteps that lead to its downfall. Were you a regular user of Digg? Do you still use it? Let us know what you think in the comments.

The History of Digg

Dec. 5, 2004: Digg is Launched

Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetsky and Jay Adelson start Digg, a community-based news aggregator, with a $6,000 investment from then 27-year-old Rose. The team dubbed the site “Digg” because dig.com was already owned by Disney.

May 1, 2005: Diggnation First Broadcast

Rose and Alex Albrecht start a weekly video broadcast titled Diggnation, where they discussed the top content from Digg as well as other humor. The podcast became a huge success, and the pair even took their show on the road to many tech conferences including SXSW.

Oct. 28, 2005: Digg Gets Funding

Summer, 2006: Success Finds Digg

As of June, 2006, Digg moved to expand its verticals beyond technology, to include science, world news, business, entertainment and video. The company is on the right track; in August, Rose is featured on the cover of BusinessWeek.

In September, Digg's staff receives an additional $1 million in startup funding, this time for their podcasting arm Revision3. The New York Post releases a study valuing Digg at $250 million.

April 2, 2009: DiggBar Released

Digg released the DiggBar to ensure users who left their site would return. It put a small bar on the top of pages visited through Digg, allowing users to upvote or bury the story. Because it was somewhat invasive, it wasn't popular with users.

Aug. 6, 2009: Diggable Advertisments

In an effort to increase advertising revenue while providing a seamless experience for users, Digg released ads that appeared on the homepage with the rest of the user-submitted content. The pieces were clearly marked as sponsored, and weren't a big hit with the site's users.

April 5, 2010: Kevin Rose becomes CEO

Digg and former CEO Jay Adelson parted ways, and Kevin Rose became the new Digg CEO. His first decision was to kill the DiggBar after so many users complained.

Aug. 25, 2010: Digg Launches Version 4.0

Digg made dramatic changes to its interface to counter its declining traffic numbers. Digg 4.0 spent more than a month in alpha testing, and it was released to much fanfare.

Aug. 31, 2010: Problems, and a new CEO

Digg's new version caused angry users to flee en masse, and turn to Reddit to vent their frustrations. The traffic numbers can be seen in this graph, courtesy of HitWise.

Additionally, Rose gave up his role as CEO, turning the reins over to former Amazon executive Matt Williams, who still retains the role. Rose said he would remain at Digg, but turn the "day to day" operations over to Williams.

Oct. 3, 2011: Diggnation Stops Casting

Diggnation announces it will air its final episodes in January of the next year, marking an end to the six-year-long run. It had more than 400 episodes after the two-part finale ended.

March 18, 2011: Kevin Rose Leaves Digg

Kevin Rose announced in a tweet that he was leaving Digg, after two days of rumors. “I’ll continue advising Digg [and serve] on the board of directors and taping Diggnation (as I have been since [Matt Williams] joined).”

Rose went on to work on his own startup company, MIlk, which put out only one app -- Oink -- before shutting its doors. He was then hired by Google almost a year later.

July 12, 2012: Digg Sold to Betaworks

Digg was sold to Betaworks, a New York-based startup who focuses on news products. The price was reported as $500,000 originally, but CEO Matt Williams said that was only for the assets, and the number was higher.

With Rose gone and many of the Digg staff being folded into Betaworks, what will Digg's future hold?

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